Salvatore Ferragamo, CEO of Il Borro, and his sister Vittoria, head of special projects at the estate, with their father, Ferruccio Ferragamo, owner of Il Borro since 1993 and son of the founder of the fashion house Salvatore Ferragamo.
Courtesy of Il Borro

Ferruccio Ferragamo, one of six children of the Italian fashion legend, Salvatore Ferragamo, and today the company’s chairman, began taking his family to Il Borro, an estate in the countryside of Tuscany, 45 minutes north of their home in Florence, in the mid-1980s.

Today, Il Borro, which Ferruccio bought in 1993 from Duke Amedeo of Savoy-Aosta, is not only a destination luxury villa situated in a restored medieval village in the hills above the city of Arezzo, it’s a sustainability paradise, with solar panels powering the property, and organic vegetables and eggs providing food for the estate’s restaurants as well as for customers in the region.

The land—once held by the Medicis—the dynastic family of the Italian Renaissance, is also home to a winery, producing about 12,000 cases a year from 45 hectares (more than 111 acres) of organically grown grape vines.

Salvatore Ferragamo, 47, Ferruccio’s son, and his grandfather’s namesake, is CEO of the sprawling enterprise, which involves his sister, Vittoria, who manages the gardens and the village, that includes among its artisans and shops an outlet with clothes designed by Vivia, another sister.

The younger Salvatore, one of 27 grandchildren of the fashion legend, was in New York recently and sat down with Penta to talk about his decision to go into his family’s wine and hospitality business, taking a different path than his twin brother, James, who manages Salvatore Ferragamo’s men’s and women’s leather products division.

Salvatore also offered tastes of two of his premier wines: The flagship Il Borro Toscana 2015 (US$55), an elegant Merlot dominant blend with Cabernet Sauvignon, Syrah, and Petit Verdot; and Petruna Anfora Il Borro (US$45), a fruit-filled red made 100% from Tuscany’s indigenous Sangiovese grapes, and aged for a year in clay pots, or amphora, an ancient approach to winemaking that’s being revived.

Penta: How did you get involved running Il Borro Toscana instead of going into fashion?

Salvatore Ferragamo: I thought, you know, I carry my grandfather’s name, why don’t I do something different and contribute to my family in another way? My father had just bought this property and he needed somebody from the family to help him, and I jumped at the opportunity. It's been an amazing experience, starting from the restoration, and planting the vineyards.

Did your father intend to get into the wine business when he bought Il Borro?

He was intent on transforming the medieval village, restoring it and turning it into a hotel. He said, ‘you know, something I will never do is make wine!” I said, “Dad, this is the ’90s, everybody's making wine, let’s make a little wine.” We started in 1994, and planted the first four hectares. From there, he became incredibly passionate.

What is your approach to winemaking?

Our philosophy in producing wine is, one, according to terroir (the local soil and environment). The property stretches up into the mountains. We’re going from a rocky mountain soil down into a more compact, deep valley soil. We plant the vines that are known to perform best in the different types of soils.

The second concept is sustainability. All our wines are produced with organic sustainability. And we have some fun practices. For example, we released predator insects to fight the red spider, who likes to make holes in our grapes. We also have one wine we will be releasing this year from a very small vineyard we are cultivating with the use of a horse, which will really reduce the soil compression from the heavy machinery.

Our hospitality business also is a negative carbon footprint property. We fitted about two megawatts of solar energy on the property, which produces about two million kilowatt hours a year. The property only consumes 600,000 kilowatts. The rest goes back to the grid and this actually amounts to about 930 tons of a CO2 emissions saved. When guests come to the property, their presence is not generating a carbon emission.

Tell me about Petruna, this small production wine made under Italy’s newest appellation. The Valdarno di Sopra DOC requires its wines to be 100% organic but allows producers to plant grapes best suited to the soil of individual vineyards.

It’s something unique and I have to tell you the truth, [Petruna] is under this new DOC, which is called the Valdarno di Sopra, and the president of this DOC, Luca Sanjust, who makes the wine from [Tenuta di] Petrolo, he was the first one who started with the amphoras. I asked him if he didn’t mind if I was to produce with them also, and he said, “No, the more we produce this type of wine from our DOC, the better.” That was for me the inspiration. I like to give him the credit because it was a very good idea.

Are you happy you chose to be in the wine-making business, rather than fashion?

The wine business, it is incredibly fragmented. Italy counts for 160,000 producers. So there is a huge amount of competition. But I enjoy it.

Sometimes, as the Ferragamo family, people say, “oh you do it as a hobby.” It is sometimes a positive aspect to have the name, because it creates some interest, and it’s sometimes negative because people maybe don’t take you so seriously as a conventional farmer. But we do take it very seriously.

Ferruccio Ferragamo, one of six children of the Italian fashion legend, Salvatore Ferragamo, and today the company’s chairman, began taking his family to Il Borro, an estate in the countryside of Tuscany, 45 minutes north of their home in Florence, in the mid-1980s.

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